Sacramento is the capital of the U.S. state of California an the county seat of Sacramento County. Located along the Sacramento River and just south of the American River's confluence in California's expansive Central Valley, it is the seventh most populous city in California with a 2008 estimated population of 475,743. Sacramento is the core cultural and economic center of its four-county metropolitan area (El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento, and Yolo counties) with a combined population of 2,136,604. The Sacramento Metropolitan Area is the largest in the Central Valley, and is the fourth-largest in California, behind the Greater Los Angeles Area, the San Francisco Bay Area, and the San Diego area. Greater Sacramento has been cited as one of the five "most livable" regions in America, and the city was cited by Time magazine as America's most integrated.